rather than using a biased narrative or a series of carefully constructed evidence, the atomic café lets its subject matter speak for itself. what results is a montage along the lines of a cultural mix tape, some fotage remixed and edited for effect, others shown in their entirety. The subject matter is the atomic bomb and while some of the archived footage is tedious, others that splice footage of radiation poisoning into a series of "don't panic" public service announcements. There are some genuinely funny segments too, like the announcer who takes a moment out to state that in the midst of all the communist "propoganda" flying around, he's proud he is that he owns 2 lovely shopping plazas, which he proceeds to shamelessly advertise. And of course, the classic Duck and Cover videos shown to schoolchildren worldwide in the mid-50's. The soundtrack of forgotten country, lounge, and rockabilly tunes about hydrogen bomb fears is stellar as well. But the culmination and as well as the most powerful moment comes when a simulated Nuclear attack on the US combines footage from all of the previous segments into a harrowing collage of post-war hysteria.
Review of The Atomic Cafe
